JVP condemns the recent op-ed published by David Horowitz in the Daily Cal

As a Jewish organization committed to peace, equal rights, and humanitarian principles, we decry any person or organization whose goal is to perpetuate hatred, fear, and misinformation. David Horowitz’s tactics, and his role as what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement,” puts him squarely in that camp. His tactics are unethical, misleading, and damaging to a campus environment; he is not interested in a just or equitable campus climate, only in promoting himself.

Horowitz’s toxic views are not limited to Israel/Palestine: he has revealed himself to be against human rights, feminism, civil rights, and LGBT equality.

Jewish Voice for Peace is an organization committed to justice and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and supports the respectful dialogue that students of all political affiliations engage in on this issue. Horowitz’s most recent slander against Students for Justice in Palestine, a diverse, democratic student organization, is just a continuation of the tactic he has been using for years: to claim that any political affiliation that is different than his own is in fact Islamic fundamentalism in disguise.

In 2006, he published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, in which he claimed that established and well-respected academics were “poisoning the minds of young people.” In 2004, his book Unholy Alliance claimed that leftists support Islamic terrorism. His claims are no more than the dubious fantasies of a self-promoting fearmonger.

Horowitz’s toxic views are not limited to Israel/Palestine: he has revealed himself to be against human rights, feminism, civil rights, and LGBT equality. He is the author of several pieces that, at best, misrepresent the role of lesbian and gay activism in the AIDS crisis, or at worst, blame the AIDS crisis on gay liberation itself. His website, “Discover the Networks,” claims that human rights are “open-ended schemes of social control that can’t help but interfere with traditional Anglo-American liberties.”

Despite his claims that he is protecting Jewish students through singling out SJP, his website argues that the push to publicly recognize religions other than Christianity amounts to a “war on Christianity”; and further, that Christianity, unlike Judaism and Islam, infuses the United States with “virtues of self-reliance, accountability, and individuality.” His site is also critical of multiculturalism and diversity, claiming they “diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students.”

Horowitz’s campaign to smear SJP is an affront to all people working for justice in Palestine, while being disrespectful to the history of the Holocaust, and insulting to the Jewish community. It makes it harder to combat anti-Semitism when it does exist on campus, and promotes hatred rather than advocates for justice.

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ABOUT JVP

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.